Imperial Designs Postimperial Extremes

Anchored in the Russian Empire, but not limited to it, the eight studies in this volume explore the nineteenth-century imperial responses to the challenge of modernity, the dramatic disruptions of World War I, the radical scenarios of the interwar period and post-communist endgames at the different edges of Eurasia. The book continues and amplifies the historiographic momentum created by Alfred J. Rieber’s long and fruitful scholarly career. First, the volume addresses the attempts of Russian imperial rulers and elites to overcome the economic backwardness of the empire with respect to the West. The ensuing rivalry of several interest groups (entrepreneurs, engineers, economists) created new social forms in the subsequent rounds of modernization. The studies explore the dynamics of the metamorphoses of what Rieber famously conceptualized as a “sedimentary society” in the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet settings. Second, the volume also expands and dwells on the concept of frontier zones as dynamic, mutable, shifting areas, characterized by multi-ethnicity, religious diversity, unstable loyalties, overlapping and contradictory models of governance, and an uneasy balance between peaceful co-existence and bloody military clashes. In this connection, studies pay special attention to forced and spontaneous migrations, and population politics in modern Eurasia.

Anchored in the Russian Empire, but not limited to it, the eight studies in this volume explore the nineteenth-century imperial responses to the challenge of modernity, the dramatic disruptions of World War I, the radical scenarios of the interwar period and post-communist endgames at the different edges of Eurasia. The book continues and amplifies the historiographic momentum created by Alfred J. Rieber’s long and fruitful scholarly career. First, the volume addresses the attempts of Russian imperial rulers and elites to overcome the economic backwardness of the empire with respect to the West. The ensuing rivalry of several interest groups (entrepreneurs, engineers, economists) created new social forms in the subsequent rounds of modernization. The studies explore the dynamics of the metamorphoses of what Rieber famously conceptualized as a “sedimentary society” in the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet settings. Second, the volume also expands and dwells on the concept of frontier zones as dynamic, mutable, shifting areas, characterized by multi-ethnicity, religious diversity, unstable loyalties, overlapping and contradictory models of governance, and an uneasy balance between peaceful co-existence and bloody military clashes. In this connection, studies pay special attention to forced and spontaneous migrations, and population politics in modern Eurasia.

Russia’s Turkish Wars examines the changing place of the Balkan population in Russian military thought, strategic planning, and occupation policies. It reveals choices made by the tsarist strategists and commanders during the Russian-Ottoman wars, reflecting a general reconceptualization of the role of “the people” in modern warfare that took place during the nineteenth century. The book explores the tsarist military’s engagement with the population of the Balkans in the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. It draws on previously unpublished materials from Russian archives as well as a broad range of published primary sources. Victor Taki recounts the discussions among Russian military men and the international relations of the nineteenth century. Russia’s Turkish Wars ultimately provides a new perspective on both military change and Imperial Russia’s Balkan entanglements.

One of the goals of Russia’s Eastern policy was to turn Moldavia and Wallachia, the two Romanian principalities north of the Danube, from Ottoman vassals into a controllable buffer zone and a springboard for future military operations against Constantinople. Russia on the Danube describes the divergent interests and uneasy cooperation between the Russian officials and the Moldavian and Wallachian nobility in a key period between 1812 and 1834. Victor Taki’s meticulous examination of the plans and memoranda composed by Russian administrators and the Romanian elite underlines the crucial consequences of this encounter. The Moldavian and Wallachian nobility used the Russian-Ottoman rivalry in order to preserve and expand their traditional autonomy. The comprehensive institutional reforms born out of their interaction with the tsar’s officials consolidated territorial statehood on the lower Danube, providing the building blocks of a nation state. The main conclusion of the book is that although Russian policy was driven by self-interest, and despite the Russophobia among a great part of the Romanian intellectuals, this turbulent period significantly contributed to the emergence, several decades later, of modern Romania.

Bessarabia?mostly occupied by modern-day republic of Moldova?was the only territory representing an object of rivalry and symbolic competition between the Russian Empire and a fully crystallized nation-state: the Kingdom of Romania. This book is an intellectual prehistory of the Bessarabian problem, focusing on the antagonism of the national and imperial visions of this contested periphery. Through a critical reassessment and revision of the traditional historical narratives, the study argues that Bessarabia was claimed not just by two opposing projects of ?symbolic inclusion,? but also by two alternative and theoretically antagonistic models of political legitimacy. By transcending the national lens of Bessarabian / Moldovan history and viewing it in the broader Eurasian comparative context, the book responds to the growing tendency in recent historiography to focus on the peripheries in order to better understand the functioning of national and imperial states in the modern era. ÿ

Aelian's Historical Miscellany is a pleasurable example of light reading for Romans of the early third century. Offering engaging anecdotes about historical figures, retellings of legendary events, and descriptive pieces - in sum: amusement, information, and variety - Aelian's collection of nuggets and narratives could be enjoyed by a wide reading public. A rather similar book had been published in Latin in the previous century by Aulus Gellius; Aelian is a late, perhaps the last, representative of what had been a very popular genre. Here then are anecdotes about the famous Greek philosophers, poets, historians, and playwrights; myths instructively retold; moralizing tales about heroes and rulers, athletes and wise men; reports about styles in dress, foods and drink, lovers, gift-giving practices, entertainments, religious beliefs and death customs; and comments on Greek painting. Some of the information is not preserved in any other source. Underlying it all are Aelian's Stoic ideals as well as this Roman's great admiration for the culture of the Greeks (whose language he borrowed for his writings).

Tsar and Sultan offers a unique insight into Russian Orientalism as the intellectual force behind Russian-Ottoman encounters. Through war diaries and memoirs, accounts of captivity and diplomatic correspondences, Victor Taki's analysis of military documents demonstrates a crucial aspect of Russia's discovery of the Orient based on its rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. Narratives depicting the brutal realities of Russian-Turkish military conflicts influenced the Orientalisation of the Ottoman Empire. In turn, Russian identity was built as the counter-image to the demonised Turk. This book explains the significance of Russian Orientalism on Russian identity and national policies of westernisation. Students of both European and Middle East studies will appreciate Taki's unique approach to Russian-Turkish relations and their influence on Eurasian history.

Dimitris Stamatopoulos undertakes the first systematic comparison of the dominant ethnic historiographic models and divergences elaborated by Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Romanian, Turkish, and Russian intellectuals with reference to the ambiguous inheritance of Byzantium. The title alludes to the seminal work of Nicolae Iorga in the 1930s, Byzantium after Byzantium, that argued for the continuity between the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires. The idea of the continuity of empires became a kind of touchstone for national historiographies. Rival Balkan nationalisms engaged in a "war of interpretation" as to the nature of Byzantium, assuming different positions of adoption or rejection of its imperial model and leading to various schemes of continuity in each national historiographic canon. Stamatopoulos discusses what Byzantium represented for nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars and how their perceptions related to their treatment of the imperial model: whether a different perception of the medieval Byzantine period prevailed in the Greek national center as opposed to Constantinople; how nineteenth-century Balkan nationalists and Russian scholars used Byzantium to invent their own medieval period (and, by extension, their own antiquity); and finally, whether there exist continuities or discontinuities in these modes of making ideological use of the past.